1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus for recording a digital picture signal resulting from a compression process using orthogonal transform.
2. Description of the Related Art
A digital picture signal conforming to the MPEG standards results from a compression process using orthogonal transform. Such an MPEG digital picture signal represents a sequence of frames including intra-frames and inter-frames. Here, the intra-frames are generated by an intra-frame encoding process while the inter-frames are generated by an inter-frame predictive encoding process.
There is a digital VTR (video tape recorder) which records a digital picture signal on a magnetic tape. A typical digital picture signal to be recorded results from orthogonal transform implementing data amount compression. An example of such a digital picture signal is an MPEG digital picture signal. As previously indicated, the digital picture signal of this type represents a sequence of frames including intra-frames and inter-frames. Accordingly, on the magnetic tape loaded with the digital picture signal by the digital VTR, there is a mixture of signal segments corresponding to intra-frames and signal segments corresponding to inter-frames. Generally, the positions of intra-frame-corresponding signal segments on the magnetic tape have a given period. A picture can be reproduced from only one signal segment corresponding to an intra-frame while a picture can not be reproduced from only one signal segment corresponding to an inter-frame. Accordingly, a conventional technique for special playback such as high-speed search playback in a VTR of the VHS format can not be applied to special reproduction of picture information from such a digital VTR magnetic tape.